


My Love Has Concrete Feet (The Discordant Symphony Remix)

by waketosleep



Category: Fringe
Genre: Angst, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-25
Updated: 2012-03-25
Packaged: 2017-11-02 12:24:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,417
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/368944
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/waketosleep/pseuds/waketosleep
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For a while, Peter had thought he'd left duplicity behind him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	My Love Has Concrete Feet (The Discordant Symphony Remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [monanotlisa](https://archiveofourown.org/users/monanotlisa/gifts).
  * Inspired by [A Symphony that's You](https://archiveofourown.org/works/334224) by [monanotlisa](https://archiveofourown.org/users/monanotlisa/pseuds/monanotlisa). 



> Writing Fringe was a nice challenge! Thanks to monanotlisa for having such a body of work to play with. Having just caught up on a bunch of recent canon, I took this opportunity to write about Peter's angst and manpain. Sorry, everyone! This fic is set before 4x12, assume general spoilers up to then.

> She’s driven. She’s very, very stubborn. She doesn’t like to lose. But she sees the best in people, even when they don’t see it themselves... She gave me something that I hadn’t had since--really, since my mom died. She gave me a place to call home. A place I’d want to call home.

\-- Peter Bishop, 4x12 "Welcome to Westfield"

 

For a while, Peter had thought he'd left duplicity behind him.

He had, once, been unquestionably a bad person. Or a person who did bad things. A shithead, anyway. Selfish, scheming, remorseless, brutal, a ball of daddy issues. He'd slept at night because it was so easy to blame all of his problems on Walter; people who sat in locked wards eating butterscotch pudding and not knowing what day it was made good scapegoats.

Peter had grown to believe it was a sign of personal growth when you could admit your amazing failures without feeling an irresistible urge to smother yourself with a pillow.

Obviously mending bridges with Walter was his penance for some of it, the things he could actually fix, anyway. Apologies could only do so much but he'd keep the man in licorice whips until the heat death of the universes if it was going to help them. That life kept throwing more and more Walters at him was an irony not lost on Peter. But of course it couldn't have stopped at just Walters.

Peter didn't measure his life in years anymore; he measured it in Olivias. The dark, pre-Olivia days; then falling for her, his first, heady taste of what a family might be like; Fauxlivia with her too-easy smirk and the glint in her eyes and the traitorous things the swing of her hips did to his head and his heart and his dick; the pain of recovering _his_ Olivia and the dawning realization that this was what an adult relationship actually felt like, that this was what it meant to _be with_ someone, and the shock of knowing immediately that he wanted it, badly, all of it; and now his purgatory, this new Olivia, one who didn't know him and hardly wanted to, an Olivia whose life he interrupted instead of being part of it.

Peter didn't know what all this was penance for. He might have been into accounting for past lives at this point.

Fauxlivia still left a bad taste in his mouth. She'd deceived him on a level that impressed him professionally, had taken advantage of his feelings and laid waste to his life. Better yet, now she didn't even fucking remember him or what she'd done. What they'd done. His Olivia had tried to accept his best intentions like the saint she was, propped her hurt feelings up on Fauxlivia's manipulations and put on a brave smile and carried on, and Peter had done his best to stop looking at Fauxlivia and seeing the way her lower lip caught between her teeth and remembering nights of skin and passion and fucking snuggling and Bogart. It hadn't really worked yet but the turn of his stomach wasn't for hatred of her, it was for the way she'd smirk and he'd have to quell the urge to press her up against the nearest wall.

Peter didn't know how he was supposed to deal with these feelings. She wasn't his Olivia, she wasn't the same driven, stubborn, strong and silent woman who'd yanked the rug out from under him. She didn't have all the sharp edges, either; she wasn't haunted by an abusive childhood, she had a support network of friends and she didn't look alone in the middle of a crowd. She was quick to smile (Peter felt like he'd won something anytime he could get his Olivia to smile) and had an easy laugh and liked to tease and flirt and her charisma pushed all the air out of the room, and all Peter could think was that he wished his Olivia could be this easy with life and that he felt guilty for wishing it. Fauxlivia was still Olivia, still strong if brazen and intelligent if less introspective and funny if not quite as left-field about it. Different but the same at her core, and it drew him in. How could it not?

New Olivia was more familiar and that was dangerous. The same traumas but some more healed because she'd actually been taken care of like she deserved. Sometimes Peter looked at her and for a moment his heart stopped because she had the same cautious look, that unassuming set of her shoulders and the wariness that made him want to fold her up in his arms until the world left her alone. But this time he was vigilant, and when he wasn't vigilant enough her wariness of him kept him at arm's length. When he was weak he'd stand too close or touch her for a beat longer than he should or he'd bring her coffee how she liked it just so he could see the private, pleased look she gave the lid of the cup, but he was banking on their lack of shared experience to keep her away and keep him safe. If there was one thing he could count on Olivia for, it was being slow to warm up to people, and he was planning to be gone from this timeline before that was tested too much.

Peter was sure of less and less as he spent more time involved with Fringe Division but one thing remained his constant: he loved Olivia, no matter what. He was drawn to her, no matter who she was, and in his heart it felt like loving any version of her couldn't possibly be wrong. But there was only one Olivia who'd rescued him from his old life, reunited him with Walter, and stood by his side while they dealt with all the shit that got thrown at them. There was only one Olivia he'd known as a kid and then spent years of his adult life with, who'd crossed the boundaries of universes to save him from himself yet again, and that was the only Olivia he could let down his guard with. Maybe everything else was just an excuse. Peter was pretty sure that after all she'd done for him, she was getting a raw deal.

Bad luck for Olivia, wasting her time on a guy who couldn't even keep his feelings straight.

He glared at the dregs of scotch in his glass, wondering where the rest of it had gone and thinking about reaching for the bottle again when the floorboards in the kitchen doorway creaked.

"Um," said Lincoln, standing there in a t-shirt and his boxers and the goddamn glasses that Peter had given him as what he'd thought at the time had been a friendly concession. Lincoln had bedhead, and Peter could just see a rising bruise on his collarbone; he groped blindly for the scotch bottle and poured another glug into his glass.

"Little early in the morning for scotch, isn't it?" Lincoln asked lightly, not moving. His face was wary.

"Scotch is good anytime you're having an emotional crisis." Peter let his elbow rest on the table as he tipped the glass into his mouth.

This was apparently a signal to approach; Lincoln made his way cautiously to the seat across from Peter and eased himself into it. "Was it that bad for you?"

The attempt at a joke was about all Peter could take. "Lincoln, what kind of person professes to love someone and then goes and fucks everything up by having complicated feelings for other, different people?"

Lincoln looked perplexed. "A human person?"

"Do you think a person can be fundamentally bad? Not just do bad things but actually at their core be a shitty human being?" Peter was talking into his glass.

"No," said Lincoln with a confidence that startled Peter into looking at him again.

"No?"

Lincoln shook his head. "No. Everyone's redeemable."

Peter let that rattle through his head for a moment. "This shouldn't have happened," he said, gesturing vaguely between them. "It's not going to happen again."

Lincoln gnawed his lip and nodded, looking down at the table. "Sorry. I didn't want to complicate things more."

"Don't be sorry," said Peter roughly. "It's not like I said no."

Peter had thought he was done being duplicitous. He knocked back the rest of his scotch before leaving Lincoln in the kitchen.

 

THE END


End file.
